Instead of scrapping the Department of Education, it needs to be reinvented (1 Viewer)

As it stands prior to Trump I even, the Department of Education has woefully poor enforcement skills and virtually no ability to fund K-12 school. Higher education is an entirely different matter, which I'm not addressing here. The reinvention of the Department of Education should be twofold:

1) First, it must be able to establish a bare-bones national curriculum. I'm not talking about HOW things are taught, but WHAT things are taught. For example, you could probably develop a semi-permanent curriculum criteria for a number of things, like physics, history, etc. -- things that are static and relatively unchanging. Gravity will always be gravity, The parts of speech (nouns, adverbs, etc.) will always be the parts of speech. World Wars I and II will always be siginificant enough events to be taught, etc. Anything above that bare-bones curriculum would up to the states and individual schools and school districts to expand upon if they wish.

2) Finally, it must also be able to investigate schools who have a preponderance of students failing to achieve these basic criteria. This involves a) being given the power to investigate schools and school districts writ large, and b) having the option to either provide more funds to these schools (which it doesn't have), or the ability to directly fine the school (or school district) if the reason for so many students being left behind is due to plain educational negligence. And that fine must be paid by the educational instructors since it would be a collective individual failing, not by the funds of the schools. This second part is essential when it comes to private and charter schools.

I never liked "teaching to the test," but there does need to be some sort of bare-bones, universally-important criteria. I think measuring success against whether specific things are being specifically taught by teachers and understood by students is much more preferable since it would minimize "teaching to the test," and replace it with "teaching to the curriculum." Under this system, in theory, the Department of Education could investigate a school where students are not learning what they should, and find out that instead of it being the teachers, you have students who routinely fail because they all skip class. That's not the school's responsibility, so it would neither fine the school nor increase their funding, either. Obviously Congress would have to provide a fund that the Department of Education could dole out when funding would fix the problem.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter. The Department of Education is largely redundant as it is now, so if you're not going to change it for K-12, then getting rid of at least anything that has to do with K-12 would make the second-most sense, with reinventing it making the most sense.

 

[tshade]

As it stands prior to Trump I even, the Department of Education has woefully poor enforcement skills and virtually no ability to fund K-12 school. Higher education is an entirely different matter, which I'm not addressing here. The reinvention of the Department of Education should be twofold:

1) First, it must be able to establish a bare-bones national curriculum. I'm not talking about HOW things are taught, but WHAT things are taught. For example, you could probably develop a semi-permanent curriculum criteria for a number of things, like physics, history, etc. -- things that are static and relatively unchanging. Gravity will always be gravity, The parts of speech (nouns, adverbs, etc.) will always be the parts of speech. World Wars I and II will always be siginificant enough events to be taught, etc. Anything above that bare-bones curriculum would up to the states and individual schools and school districts to expand upon if they wish.

??? I don't know any schools that don't have a good curriculum on what should be taught. Do you??

2) Finally, it must also be able to investigate schools who have a preponderance of students failing to achieve these basic criteria. This involves a) being given the power to investigate schools and school districts writ large, and b) having the option to either provide more funds to these schools (which it doesn't have), or the ability to directly fine the school (or school district) if the reason for so many students being left behind is due to plain educational negligence.

How the heck would you measure "educational negligence" ????

And that fine must be paid by the educational instructors since it would be a collective individual failing, not by the funds of the schools.

"collective" ??? So, all teachers are blamed-----even the "more talented" ?? (whatever that means.....)

This second part is essential when it comes to private and charter schools.

?????

I never liked "teaching to the test," but there does need to be some sort of bare-bones, universally-important criteria. I think measuring success against whether specific things are being specifically taught by teachers and understood by students is much more preferable since it would minimize "teaching to the test," and replace it with "teaching to the curriculum." Under this system, in theory, the Department of Education could investigate a school where students are not learning what they should, and find out that instead of it being the teachers, you have students who routinely fail because they all skip class. That's not the school's responsibility, so it would neither fine the school nor increase their funding, either. Obviously Congress would have to provide a fund that the Department of Education could dole out when funding would fix the problem.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter. The Department of Education is largely redundant as it is now, so if you're not going to change it for K-12, then getting rid of at least anything that has to do with K-12 would make the second-most sense, with reinventing it making the most sense.

Education improvement needs to start with the families. The same teacher "produces" both great students AND poor students............why? Answer: some students are more ready to learn when they walk in the school door, and some put learning last on their list before they step in the school............

 

[phoenix2020]

The primary problem with our educational system is that most parents do not care to prioritize their child's education. They do not realize that ours is a competitive society and their jobs as parents is to do as much as they possibly can (within the law!) to give their children every possible educational advantage, including imparting upon them a mindset that school is serious, important and their top priority.

 

[PoliSciPulse]

??? I don't know any schools that don't have a good curriculum on what should be taught. Do you??

Which is why the fedaral government needs to establish a bare-bones educational curriculum. IF you're going to be a Department of Education, that should be the first thing. Not sure where you're from, but even in the Northeast (where education used to be superior -- I grew up in NY), the curriculum varied between state-to-state. For example, Connecticut required reading Homer's Odyssey, while New York's didn't. Now, where the Odyssey should be in the bare-bones curriculum or not, I don't know. But educators from all 50 states who help designing this criteria would know.

How the heck would you measure "educational negligence" ????

Easy. You have a teacher that has the skills but is a slacker and doesn't take their job seriously. And let's say in my hypothetical, they're all in one school The DoE would come in and fine each of those educators personally. These incidents are going to be few and far-between (I hope).

"collective" ??? So, all teachers are blamed-----even the "more talented" ?? (whatever that means.....)

Nope. You would have to prove a systemic failure of that school or school district, and not only a systemic failure, but one that would not be solved by funding. Basically, in order for that scenario to happen, the whole school or school system would have to be rotten to the core. There would be no talented teachers in this situation, just teachers who never should have been hired for the job because they don't have the skills.

?????

Education improvement needs to start with the families. The same teacher "produces" both great students AND poor students............why? Answer: some students are more ready to learn when they walk in the school door, and some put learning last on their list before they step in the school............

And some schools have more funding than others, too. Department of Education with the funding system could level that playing field. Some schools use shared textbooks, while richer districts may be able to give their students textbooks to keep.

In your situation, where we have a great and poor outcome... there would be no fine. But if the investigation reveals that, I don't know, they're using textbooks than are decades old, then the DoE should step in and provide the poorer school districts with block grant funds to be used to update their textbooks.

Finally, the DoE (or any department) can not control families, and whether a student is prepared to learn or not is not necessarily something that is a parent's or family's fault, either. Some students just do not have the drive to learn, even if the parents were impressing upon them the importance of learning. But if the Department of Education were to investigate massive failures at a school and find out that, no, it's the students and not the school, then no action would be taken.

Remember, the situation where a school and its educator would be fined would have to be egregious, not just 2 students failed a course. This would have to be a systemic failure of epic proportions.

EDIT: I also want to remind people reading this that I'm talking about redesigning the Department of Education, which has control over -education- and not over parents.

 

[Stealers Wheel]

DOE does not and has never dictated curriculum. DOE provides funding for states and local education. They try to seek out and identify specific issues and remedies within specific districts. While they can encourage states to adopt certain education practices, DOE cannot get around that pesky 10 amendment.

There is nothing in the US Constitution that requires the federal government to fund state education. Nor is there any constitutional requirement that the states take that federal money.

DOE can attach strings to the funds they dole out, but they cannot dictate curriculum, nor should they. However, if any state objects to things like audits and accountability as to where the money was spent, they can assert their sovereignty by refusing to take those federal dollars.

What Trump wants to do is to be able to dole out federal money to states like party favors without any accountability as to how that money is spent. Texas wants to continue receiving their annual $1.8 billion in DOE money, but they want to do away with the requirement that they tell the taxpayers how they spent that money.

 

[Stealers Wheel]

My experience is that the weakest link in the educational process is - the parents. Show me a child of normal intelligence who failing, either academically or behaviorally, and I will show you a parent who has checked out.

I believe you only get out of an education what you put into it. Too many parents think it is somebody else's responsibility to see to it their kids get a quality education. It is and always has been the responsibility of the parents to educate their kids. Schools are simply there to facilitate that goal.

 

[trouble13]

As it stands prior to Trump I even, the Department of Education has woefully poor enforcement skills and virtually no ability to fund K-12 school. Higher education is an entirely different matter, which I'm not addressing here. The reinvention of the Department of Education should be twofold:

1) First, it must be able to establish a bare-bones national curriculum. I'm not talking about HOW things are taught, but WHAT things are taught. For example, you could probably develop a semi-permanent curriculum criteria for a number of things, like physics, history, etc. -- things that are static and relatively unchanging. Gravity will always be gravity, The parts of speech (nouns, adverbs, etc.) will always be the parts of speech. World Wars I and II will always be siginificant enough events to be taught, etc. Anything above that bare-bones curriculum would up to the states and individual schools and school districts to expand upon if they wish.

2) Finally, it must also be able to investigate schools who have a preponderance of students failing to achieve these basic criteria. This involves a) being given the power to investigate schools and school districts writ large, and b) having the option to either provide more funds to these schools (which it doesn't have), or the ability to directly fine the school (or school district) if the reason for so many students being left behind is due to plain educational negligence. And that fine must be paid by the educational instructors since it would be a collective individual failing, not by the funds of the schools. This second part is essential when it comes to private and charter schools.

I never liked "teaching to the test," but there does need to be some sort of bare-bones, universally-important criteria. I think measuring success against whether specific things are being specifically taught by teachers and understood by students is much more preferable since it would minimize "teaching to the test," and replace it with "teaching to the curriculum." Under this system, in theory, the Department of Education could investigate a school where students are not learning what they should, and find out that instead of it being the teachers, you have students who routinely fail because they all skip class. That's not the school's responsibility, so it would neither fine the school nor increase their funding, either. Obviously Congress would have to provide a fund that the Department of Education could dole out when funding would fix the problem.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter. The Department of Education is largely redundant as it is now, so if you're not going to change it for K-12, then getting rid of at least anything that has to do with K-12 would make the second-most sense, with reinventing it making the most sense.

I am not anti union but the teachers unions are the biggest problem i see in our education system. They have the wrong priorities and it has created a bad situtaion.

 

[PoliSciPulse]

My experience is that the weakest link in the educational process is - the parents. Show me a child of normal intelligence who failing, either academically or behaviorally, and I will show you a parent who has checked out.

Yes, I believe that parents are the weakest link. You can go back to Locke's theory of tabula rasa -- blank slate -- and apply it to students. Kids are born essentially knowing nothing but their genetic dispositions. It's what parents put on that slate -- in the case, that education is not in the parents' bailiwick and/or is not important -- that otherwise form a child's beliefs.

(Un)fortunately government cannot regulate what parents teach their children -- for better or worse -- and so what I'm trying to do with this is to give the DoE a raison d'être, in this case giving it power to design a curriculum that all schools are held to, and giving them the power to issue fines to schools and educators who are behaving badly (though I do admit, this occurrence is few and far between, I believe we are in agreement in principle here -- but may differ slightly on how frequently we think it occurs), and giving them power to give individual schools additional funding to bring their facilities, etc. up-to-date if they are woefully underprepared and out of date. So under this system, all the schools in impoverished districts would immediately get funds to bring their educational facilities up to date. And higher education loans - eh -- yeah, you could say that's the sole purpose of the DoE, but that taken by itself isn't really a reason of being. And neither is issuing fines to higher education schools. The first one could be done by an organization similar to Freddie Mac, and the latter could probably be done by the FCC if we did have to reassign those functions.

I remember Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education, saying that the Department simply did not have enough power to fix what is wrong with the Department of Education.

DOE does not and has never dictated curriculum. DOE provides funding for states and local education. They try to seek out and identify specific issues and remedies within specific districts. While they can encourage states to adopt certain education practices, DOE cannot get around that pesky 10 amendment.

There is nothing in the US Constitution that requires the federal government to fund state education. Nor is there any constitutional requirement that the states take that federal money.

DOE can attach strings to the funds they dole out, but they cannot dictate curriculum, nor should they. However, if any state objects to things like audits and accountability as to where the money was spent, they can assert their sovereignty by refusing to take those federal dollars.

What Trump wants to do is to be able to dole out federal money to states like party favors without any accountability as to how that money is spent. Texas wants to continue receiving their annual $1.8 billion in DOE money, but they want to do away with the requirement that they tell the taxpayers how they spent that money.

Here you went to Trump. While you can definitely say that Trump is the bogeyman in this case since he is the President, I'm focusing more on "If I could reinvent this department, what would I have it do?" I would have a board made up of 50 of the best educators, one from each state, design and recommend an evergreen curriculum. So, we're not talking things like "What's the most important event in world history to President Trump?" We're talking parts of speech (nouns and adverbs); i.e., important things that will never change.

I do agree with you that this -might- need an amendment. I'm all for an amendment if it means that children will all get the same minimal education and none will get less. Some will get more in superior school districts, but none will be lacking basic knowledge.

BUT if you wanted to try to get around that, you say, "here's what we what you to teach your kids at bare minimum. You teach them this, you will be eligible for a block grant to update your schools." There will be certain schools, particularly in the Northeast (Circa 1990s -- I have no clue what they are teaching these days) and the West that are already exceeding the bare minimum and also don't need funding, so they could opt out. But I think if you sold it correctly, Mississippi, for example, would do it just for the money to update their schools.

As far as investigations, those would be few and far between. Like I said, it would take an active effort for teachers and administrators to be absolutely neglectful of the children and their education to even trigger an investigation.

 

[ttwtt78640]

The federal government has no constitutional power over education. I disagree with Trump’s plan to convert it into a department of income redistribution - which he falsely claims is ‘getting rid of it’.

 

[Allan]

I am not anti union

You are anti union.

but the teachers unions are the biggest problem i see in our education system. They have the wrong priorities and it has created a bad situtaion.

Most teachers in developed countries are unionized. Many of those countries have better outcomes than the US.

 

[Allan]

The primary problem with our educational system is that most parents do not care to prioritize their child's education. They do not realize that ours is a competitive society and their jobs as parents is to do as much as they possibly can (within the law!) to give their children every possible educational advantage, including imparting upon them a mindset that school is serious, important and their top priority.

My experience is that the weakest link in the educational process is - the parents. Show me a child of normal intelligence who failing, either academically or behaviorally, and I will show you a parent who has checked out.

I believe you only get out of an education what you put into it. Too many parents think it is somebody else's responsibility to see to it their kids get a quality education. It is and always has been the responsibility of the parents to educate their kids. Schools are simply there to facilitate that goal.

When I went to grade school the top performing students often had at least one parent who taught.

There are teachers on this forum. I hope they weigh in on the impact parents can have on academic success.

 

[MAGAnificent]

I am not anti union but the teachers unions are the biggest problem i see in our education system. They have the wrong priorities and it has created a bad situtaion.

Teachers unions and the politicised school boards.

 

[tshade]

In your situation, where we have a great and poor outcome... there would be no fine. But if the investigation reveals that, I don't know, they're using textbooks than are decades old, then the DoE should step in and provide the poorer school districts with block grant funds to be used to update their textbooks.

But I wonder that, even with money and supplies, will the unmotivated kids all the sudden be motivated---I have my serious doubts. There are kids that come from a lot of poor situations from home, etc....

Finally, the DoE (or any department) can not control families, and whether a student is prepared to learn or not is not necessarily something that is a parent's or family's fault, either. Some students just do not have the drive to learn, even if the parents were impressing upon them the importance of learning. But if the Department of Education were to investigate massive failures at a school and find out that, no, it's the students and not the school, then no action would be taken.

I have never seen where it was the school at fault. Give those same schools excellent material to "produce" outstanding students, and they will very likely succeed----then all of a sudden that school gets praise. It's sort of like a coach of a track team-----if the best athletes sign up for his team, then the coach looks good, but reality is he simply has great material to work with....

Remember, the situation where a school and its educator would be fined would have to be egregious, not just 2 students failed a course. This would have to be a systemic failure of epic proportions.

But we'd have to be sure that the school and the teachers were the cause-------VERY hard to do (I've never seen it.....)

EDIT: I also want to remind people reading this that I'm talking about redesigning the Department of Education, which has control over -education- and not over parents.

We must first determine IF the DOE is indeed in need of major change-------------not convinced yet.............I lean MUCH more toward it being a societal problem. Until attitudes change, nothing else will........(assuming we really want much change to begin with....)

 

[tshade]

Which is why the fedaral government needs to establish a bare-bones educational curriculum. IF you're going to be a Department of Education, that should be the first thing. Not sure where you're from, but even in the Northeast (where education used to be superior -- I grew up in NY), the curriculum varied between state-to-state. For example, Connecticut required reading Homer's Odyssey, while New York's didn't. Now, where the Odyssey should be in the bare-bones curriculum or not, I don't know. But educators from all 50 states who help designing this criteria would know.

Standardization seems nice, but all curric. I've seen are good. I like a little flexibility by the local people, states...

Easy. You have a teacher that has the skills but is a slacker and doesn't take their job seriously. And let's say in my hypothetical, they're all in one school The DoE would come in and fine each of those educators personally. These incidents are going to be few and far-between (I hope).

How to define "slacker" ??? Very tough to measure/judge...

Nope. You would have to prove a systemic failure of that school or school district, and not only a systemic failure, but one that would not be solved by funding. Basically, in order for that scenario to happen, the whole school or school system would have to be rotten to the core. There would be no talented teachers in this situation, just teachers who never should have been hired for the job because they don't have the skills.

I live in a poor area, but there is no way my comminity would allow a school district that is a total failure....no way. Every school I ever even heard of has SOME, if not most of their teachers that would be considered good teachers. Our school is the same. Teachers are heavily vetted before getting certified to teach. I lean heavily toward the community/families, etc..not the staff at the school.....

And some schools have more funding than others, too. Department of Education with the funding system could level that playing field. Some schools use shared textbooks, while richer districts may be able to give their students textbooks to keep.

True wealthy communities tend to have higher test scores, but that may be from factors OUTSIDE the schools

 

[BirdinHand]

Nah.

If you really want to see change, let’s start making some of those red states put more skin in the game.

Utah? Alaska? North Dakota? Kansas? Louisiana?

Cough it up folks - you’re absorbing more federal funding per student than anywhere else. Why is that?

Let’s take a look at your local and state tax rates. Let’s take a look at where their money is going - since they’re asking so much from the federal govt to keep the doors open and lights on.

My state - NJ - receives some of the lowest amount of per student federal funding. We carry most of the weight ourselves.


Then let’s get into what districts ARE spending money on?

Hey TX and Ohio…looking at you.

Why does Allen Public High School in Allen TX receives 8% of its per student funding from the federal government. And yet…they had enough money to build a football stadium that is one of the single most expensive football stadiums in the US? To the tune of $82.2 MILLION dollars?

Let’s dig into that and see how a district needing a lot of federal money has the money to spend on a fancy football stadium.


And then we can get into balancing staffing ratios at schools and making sure that they’re not too top heavy with “leadership” and are actually putting teachers, aides, paras, therapists, etc in CLASSROOMS as a priority in their spending.

I don’t want to be seeing large raises for the administrators when there aren’t enough aides. When there aren’t enough paras. When there aren’t enough subs. When there aren’t enough teachers.

 

[phoenix2020]

If I were to reinvent the Department of Education I would have its focus be 75% on pre-K education: evangelism, practices and educator training, funding, research. The earlier you begin, the bigger the impact. The movies about the grizzled veteran who helps the 17 year
old turn his school life around makes for good cinematic but practically speaking at that point it’s too late.

 

[trouble13]

Teachers unions and the politicised school boards.

Democrats are anti-learning

 

[Visbek]

Awww, you think shutting down the Department of Education is about improving education? That's so cute.

Sadly, the people savaging the DoE want the exact opposite of what you suggest.

They want zero federal government influence, except when they want to use federal dollars as a cudgel to advance their "we're not bigots, we just don't like DEI! Or Black people." agenda.

They do not want any schools to be held accountable, certainly not to the federal government.

And let's get real: They don't give a shit about improving education. I'm sure some of them would end public schools altogether, if they thought they could get away with it.

As to it being "redundant?" Despite repeated Republican attempts to gut the DoE, it still performs numerous functions, including:
- Student loans (this is its biggest budget item)
- Distributing funds for elementary and secondary schools (mostly for Special Education)
- Enforcing federal anti-discrimination laws in education (care to guess why Republicans have opposed the DoE since the 1970s, when it was created? Now you know.)

There's also a ton of small programs that raises the hackles of the bigots. E.g. the Office of English Language Acquisition focuses on teaching people, mostly migrants, how to speak English. The Institute of Education Sciences is a non-partisan research agency. And so on.

 

[aociswundumho]

1) First, it must be able to establish a bare-bones national curriculum.

Explain the reasoning behind why a group of politicians should decide what tens of millions of children, each with different interests, must be forced to learn.

 

[PoliSciPulse]

Explain the reasoning behind why a group of politicians should decide what tens of millions of children, each with different interests, must be forced to learn.

First, it would be a panel of educators from all 50 states who design the curriculum. Second, it would be an evergreen curriculum. What I mean by that is subjects that have always been important and will always be important. For example, the parts of speech, World War II, etc. -- things that have always been recognized as fundamental knowledge and will likely continue to be regarded as fundamental knowledge. And the goal would not be to establish a maximum curriculum but a minimum -- in other words, schools that are already thriving and already teaching those topics would not even have to change anything about what they are doing.

Standardization seems nice, but all curric. I've seen are good. I like a little flexibility by the local people, states...

Oh sure, there absolutely would be. Think bare minimum, not maximum. The goal is to standardize at a minimal level.

How to define "slacker" ??? Very tough to measure/judge...

Generally speaking, I think the definition would be a student who is generally disengaged from learning.

I live in a poor area, but there is no way my comminity would allow a school district that is a total failure....no way. Every school I ever even heard of has SOME, if not most of their teachers that would be considered good teachers. Our school is the same. Teachers are heavily vetted before getting certified to teach. I lean heavily toward the community/families, etc..not the staff at the school.....

Then the outcome of said investigation would be to fund the schools more (should the state, local governments, etc. want to accept that money)

True wealthy communities tend to have higher test scores, but that may be from factors OUTSIDE the schools

Sure -- but the Department of Education can't really regulate that as it's outside their bailiwick unfortunately.

Awww, you think shutting down the Department of Education is about improving education? That's so cute.

And that's not what I'm arguing for. Read the OP and get back to me.

 

[aociswundumho]

First, it would be a panel of educators from all 50 states who design the curriculum.

You didn't answer my question. Please answer the following:

1) Why should the opinions of state educators override yours when it comes to the education of your own children?

2) If state agents know better than you regarding your own child's education, shouldn't the state control other areas of your child's development as well? Diet, play, etc.

3) Will the state education system present both sides of contentious issues, e.g. the potential benefits of a warming earth, the downsides to welfare statism, etc.

 

[PoliSciPulse]

You didn't answer my question. Please answer the following:

1) Why should the opinions of state educators override yours when it comes to the education of your own children?

Because your children deserve a fair shot at success, and having them taught a sub-par curricula will deprive them of that fair shot. Children are also not related to just one family; they are any given nation's future. And having children who are underprepared for the world will do everyone a disservice, not just the children.

2) If state agents know better than you regarding your own child's education, shouldn't the state control other areas of your child's development as well? Diet, play, etc.

To an extent, they already do. The FDA ensures that food is safe, and there are safety regulations around playgrounds. Also, school-provided lunches are not typically under a parent's control, and neither is the content of what's in vending machines for that matter. And the government used to (not sure under Trump II) have school nutrition guidelines. Then there's the School Meal program and others which are run at the federal government -- not to mention HEAD START -- where the federal government actually does take more of an active role. Assuming those programs survive Trump II. I imagine the School Meal program would, but it would probably consist of Big Macs (I jest).

3) Will the state education system present both sides of contentious issues, e.g. the potential benefits of a warming earth, the downsides to welfare statism, etc.

Well, in this bare-bones curriculum, I doubt that those examples you used would be included in what I would consider an "evergreen" curriculum. These would be things like parts of speech, important historical events that every child should know, etc. -- in general, bare-bones curriculum should stay away from those issues presented as you would presented. But you would, for instance, teach how Congress can fund programs such as welfare, and perhaps teach students how the world has changed since it began warming out of the Ice Age, but as far as political teachings, it's not an "evergreen" issue -- that is to say, it is not universally and continually relevant. Learning the mechanics of governments around the world, for example, would be evergreen, but learning political stances on something would not be evergreen since viewpoints can change at a moment's notice.

And again, this is bare-bones, basic stuff. If the States of Texas and New York wanted to add political viewpoints to those teachings, then assuming that the bare-bones examples I used are already met and exceeded, they would be well within their rights to do so -- for better or for worse. The goal is not to limit states and schools to this criteria; it is to provide the foundation of curriculum, which states could then expand upon should they wish to do so.

 

[Dans La Lune]

Ceding the argument that the government needs to be reformed is the fist step to the right-wing 'reforming' it. Bad way to start a conversation with the right-wing while they're in power, since they're looking for rationale to destroy government. It's like the predicate of Waste, Fraud and Abuse with DOGE -- and them finding all this waste, fraud and abuse in services that people need.

 

[Slartibartfast]

You didn't answer my question. Please answer the following:

1) Why should the opinions of state educators override yours when it comes to the education of your own children?

Because most parents aren't experts in education or specific subject matters and their opinion is generally less informed or reasonable than those of experts.

2) If state agents know better than you regarding your own child's education, shouldn't the state control other areas of your child's development as well? Diet, play, etc.

I would be fine with increased state intervention if evidence can show it leads to better physical and/or mental health outcomes.

3) Will the state education system present both sides of contentious issues, e.g. the potential benefits of a warming earth, the downsides to welfare statism, etc.

It should go where there is scientific or expert consensus is on various topics and for those who disagree, then its on them to come up with better arguments or evidence that experts would listen to. In situations where their are multiple centers of consensus among experts then it should teach those points.

Ultimately what should be prioritized in this venue is scientific rigor or academic excellence, not choice.

 

[Felis Leo]

I am not anti union but the teachers unions are the biggest problem i see in our education system. They have the wrong priorities and it has created a bad situtaion.

Is there a country (or perhaps a state) that has a phenomenal education system and good education outcomes for a majority of students whose teachers do not have worker protections and collective bargaining power provided by unions or some other form of labor protection?